As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
As processors, graphics cards, random access memory (RAM) and other components in information handling systems have increased in clock speed and power consumption, the amount of heat produced by such components as a side-effect of normal operation has also increased. Often, the temperatures of these components need to be kept within a reasonable range to prevent overheating, instability, malfunction and damage leading to a shortened component lifespan. Accordingly, air movers (e.g., cooling fans and blowers) have often been used in information handling systems to cool information handling systems and their components.
Despite their advantages in cooling information handling resources, air movers generate vibrational energy which can degrade performance of other information handling systems (e.g., hard drives or other electromechanical information handling systems), cause undesirable acoustical noise, and/or present other undesirable effects. Accordingly, vibrational isolators such as grommets are typically used to mechanically isolate air movers from the bays, chasses, and/or other support structures housing the air movers. Such vibrational isolators prevent an air mover from coming into direct contact with such support structures and serve to absorb vibrational energy generated by the air mover, thus limiting the vibrational energy passed from the fan to the support structure.
However, existing vibrational isolators require significant space in the support structures for the air movers. For example, for a typical implementation of a “hot-plug” air mover, grommets may be required on the front and back of the air mover, and structures for accepting such grommets may require up to 10 millimeters of space. As another example, for a cabled air mover in which a carrier and full-structured air mover bay is not required, a grommet-based isolation system may still require up to four millimeters of space.